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A billboard erected by Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu’s AKP party in the city of Tatyan, in eastern Turkey, reads: ‘Salute to the Kouachi brothers, who avenged the Messenger of Allah [i.e. Muhammad]/May Allah accept your martyrdom/ When you [i.e. the West] strike, it is democracy when we avenge, it is terrorism.’ (Source MEMRI, January 14, 2015)

Credit: OdaTV.com, January 10, 2015

by Alan Simons

As the French novelist Victor Hugo said: “The wicked envy and hate; it is their way of admiring.” Turkey’s President Erdoğan with his sense of entitlement and grandiosity, obviously has no illusions as to whom he admires. And today, not to be outdone by his president’s feelings of self-importance, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu was quoted as saying that, “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had committed crimes against humanity comparable to those behind the Paris attacks that left 17 dead. ‘Netanyahu has committed crimes against humanity the same like those terrorists who carried out the Paris massacre,'” he told reporters in televised comments.

Both Erdoğan and Davutoğlu are desperate to find respect and stature within the Muslim world. Yet, it would seem they even lack the essential characteristics necessary of any self-proclaimed prophet that include intellectual capacity, wisdom, and profound insight. I believe it was Molière who said: “All the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill the history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill at dancing.” Someone should tell Turkey that even a self-proclaimed prophet cannot dance while having one’s foot in one’s mouth.

Here, for example, are a few comments reported yesterday by MEMRI:

– At a January 12, 2015 joint press conference with visiting Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud ‘Abbas, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accused the French in the attack, saying that the perpetrators were French citizens who had been imprisoned in the past. Asking why they had not been under surveillance by French intelligence apparatuses following their release, he said that this was “thought provoking.” He accused the West of hypocrisy and stated that Western racism, hate speech, and Islamophobia were to blame for it, saying, “We must be aware of their [i.e. the West’s] plots against the Muslim world.” Erdogan also slammed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for “daring to attend” the January 11, 2015 solidarity rally in Paris, saying that he was committing state terrorism against the Palestinians.

– On Twitter, AKP MP Ali Sahin claimed that the attack was not what it appeared to be, and that its actual targets were Muslims.

– Speaking at the Fourth AKP Youth Conference in Ankara, Ankara Mayor Melih Gokcek claimed that the Mossad was behind the Charlie Hebdo attack and the attacks that followed it in Paris.

– At the Islamist Aczmendi Lodge in Istanbul, funeral prayers were conducted for the Kouachi brothers, the perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo attack, and they were eulogized as martyrs.” The prayers were led by Muslim Gunduz, the leader of an Islamist sect.

– Columnist Dilipak, in Yeni Akit, a pro AKP publication, said: “Bravo, Children, You Did A Great Job!.. You can condemn the terror in France all you want, but for those who planned it, this is a success worth celebrating. I am certain that some are congratulating sympathizers and saying, ‘Bravo children, you did a great job.”

And as to the aftermath of Je Suis Charlie,Anne Bayefskyin anarticlepublished by Human Rights Voices on January 12, 2015, summed it up quite nicely. Here, in part, is what she had to say.

Je Suis Charlie: Kumbaya won’t save us from Islamist Terror and Hate.

The warm feelings on display in Paris and elsewhere around the world Sunday in response to the horrors of the past week, unfortunately, will do next to nothing to change the tide against Islamist terrorism. That explains why world leaders who support terrorism have no problem supporting Paris.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, now entering the eleventh year of what was originally billed as a four-year term, turned up to represent a would-be Judenrein state, where terrorism and the absence of the rule of law are the order of the day.

Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu flew into Paris to glad-hand with free expression enthusiasts, notwithstanding recent arrests of teenagers in his country for “insulting” President Erdogan.

The terrorist organization Hamas even issued a press release claiming that it “condemns the attack against Charlie Hebdo magazine and insists on the fact that differences of opinion and thought cannot justify murder.” Setting aside the fact that Palestinians living under Palestinian authority do not have freedom of opinion and thought, gunning down Jews while shopping for food wasn’t mentioned in the statement.

Add all those “Je Suis Charlie” signs, in solidarity with the magazine’s victims. Except that the words on these signs are white on a solid black background, and the Hebdo images of the prophet Muhammad are nowhere to be seen. White words on a black background are not the reason Charlie Hebdo cartoonists are dead.

And then there is France’s Jewish problem. There is no getting away from the fact that to be Jewish in France in 2015, you might have to hide in a basement freezer if you want to survive a trip to the grocery store.

Attacks on Jews in France in recent times – including torture, assaults, robbery, firebombing, rape, and murder – are too numerous to mention, each one soon forgotten by everyone but French Jews who continue to emigrate to Israel for refuge and solace. Evidently, France forgot ‘first they came for the Jews.’

In theory, it should be simple to connect the dots between slaughtering journalists, police officers, and Jews, in the same country over a mere three days. Freedom of speech, personal security, equality and freedom of religion are pretty much the essentials of democracy – and inextricably linked to one another.

Standing in the way of this revelation, however, is an apparent widespread incapacity to distinguish trumped-up, irrelevant or misplaced grievances from real ones.

Over the days of carnage, CNN regaled listeners with complaints about “unemployment” and “disaffection” among Muslim youth. We also swiftly heard detailed analysis of such things as the early loss of parents of the Kouachi brothers and the failed rap musician ambitions of Cherif Kouachi.

And, of course, there is the elephant in the chambre – Israel. As terrorist Amedy Coulibaly put it to his Jewish captives – quoting Usama bin Laden – “we are the ones who will get peace in Palestine.”

That ought to sound familiar to French President Francois Hollande…

Thank God there’s an Israel! Tanrı’ya teşekkürler bir İsrail var!

(Photo credit- Turkey, MEMRI | OdaTV.com)

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